Charming When He Needs to Be
by Lomonaaeren
Summary: HPDM slash. Maybe the world should be grateful that Harry only became the next Dark Lord and not something else. Like the Minister. Featuring Benevolently Snarky Dark Lord Harry. COMPLETE.


**Title: **Charming When He Needs To Be

**Disclaimer: **J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.

**Pairing: **Harry/Draco

**Warnings: **Crackish humor

**Wordcount:** 2500

**Rating: **R

**Summary: **Maybe the world should be grateful that Harry just became the next Dark Lord instead of something else. Like the Minister.

**Author's Notes: **This is based on sandersyager's request for Benevolently Snarky Dark Lord Harry.

**Charming When He Needs to Be**

"But they can't stand up to me. So why do they try it?"

Draco leaned back in the chair that was always his whenever he visited and watched his lover from under lowered lashes. Harry was making discontented jabs with his wand towards the fireplace, urging the flames in it higher and higher. Draco wasn't worried about them exploding outwards, though. They had reinforced the mantle and the grates after the last few disastrous wildfires.

"I don't know, I'm sure," Draco said politely. "But all I am is the bearer of the message, not the person who came up with this ridiculous test."

Harry sighed and flung his feet up on the stool in front of his chair. Draco shook his head slightly. He thought it said Something about Harry that, where he could have ordered a house-elf or a naked slave to kneel in front of him and serve as a footrest if he wanted, he preferred to rely on stools.

Maybe it was a good thing for the world that he did, and anyway, Draco wouldn't have tolerated naked slaves running around the house and tempting his lover and Lord into bed. But it said something about the standards of Dark Lordship that Harry had chosen to uphold and the ones he hadn't.

"This is a _childish _plan to take me down." Harry folded his arms and brooded, an impression that his bright red jumper and worn jeans did something to contradict. "They're going more and more mental because they can't banish me, aren't they? They don't want to think that I'm a Dark Lord who's survived all their assassination attempts, so they're trying something this stupid."

"I don't think that Voldemort would have thought of a ritual that let him ascend to godhead as childish," Draco said thoughtfully.

Harry looked at him, and Draco felt the stirring of his magic, like a great dragon waking from slumber. It was always like this, and it made Draco's breath come as short as flying on a real dragon would. He reached out and laid his hand over Harry's, but although Harry squeezed it absently, he wasn't paying much attention.

"But I know I'm not a god," Harry said. "Just a man. All right," he added, perhaps catching Draco's skeptical gaze, "an impossibly good-looking and _powerful _man, but still. Only human."

Draco wished he could tell him what it felt like to be in the presence of his power, rather than feeling it from the inside. That it was like fire, like gold, like sunlight, and that was what probably scared the Ministry and the rest of the wizarding world outside Harry's Court more than anything else, that this was a Dark Lord whose magic felt so Light.

But Harry had still taken over Hogwarts and declared that it was independent and under his protection one day when he got fed up with the Ministry's interference in the school, and then declared he was a Dark Lord when someone asked him, because only Dark Lords rebelled against the Ministry like that. So he was.

"They do fear you, and they want to trap you." Draco shrugged. "And they think that I come to negotiate with you at peril of my life."

Harry stared at him. "And what do they think the love bites are?"

"Marks of torture," Draco said promptly. It was true. More than one person had caught Draco gasping and groaning with the memory and had assumed that Harry had strapped him to a rack and had his way with him like that.

"_Idiots_." Harry rolled his head aside and stared thoughtfully at the fire again. "I already took Azkaban apart stone by stone, so I can't do that again. Maybe I ought to take the Ministry apart the same way. With them all inside."

"But then where would I work?" Draco said, and fluttered his eyelashes at Harry to hear the ring of his laughter.

"All right," Harry said, and reached out to ruffle his hair. "So I'll leave the Ministry there, for your sake. But seriously, more students are leaving Hogwarts with more skills than ever before. We can barely keep up with the immigration demands to enter the Court. Why do they think that _destroying _me is the best decision?"

"Because they can't stand anything that challenges their power," Draco said. "But more, I think, because of those letters you sent them."

"The letters only had insults. Not death threats." Harry paused. "The best insults I could think of at the time, but I bet I've got better now."

Draco hoped desperately that he'd held back his snicker as he nodded. "But it would have unnerved them less if you'd sent death threats. A Dark Lord who only takes over _part _of the wizarding world and then takes apart a few things that offend him, like Azkaban, isn't the kind they're used to dealing with."

"Their experience of life is limited," Harry said, and shook his head, his face the picture of innocence. He reached back and snagged a glass of cool honey wine from the precisely-placed tray that his own power had brought him. "Do you think it would go over better if I offered to duel with them?"

"You aren't supposed to do that, either," Draco told him severely.

"Oh, right." Harry kicked his feet up on the stool again. "Because the duel is reserved for the hero who will defeat the villain in desperate single combat." He sipped his honey wine and held out the glass to Draco. "Want some?"

Draco grinned and leaned across the space between them. He opened his mouth, and Harry dipped a few fingers into the wine and pressed them onto his tongue. Draco sipped and sucked, fluttering his lashes at Harry again.

"Talking about the Ministry anymore is probably going to kill my libido," Harry murmured, setting the glass aside and reaching for Draco. "And you don't want _that _to happen, do you?"

"Nothing kills your libido," Draco said. "It might be fun to watch it die and then resurrect it a little."

Harry laughed and learned further in, his tongue lapping out to meet Draco's. Draco met his kiss, and then met _him _halfway as Harry rose out of the chair and closed in on him. Draco didn't think any breathing human being could have sat still with Harry Potter stalking towards them like that, and not because of fear of his magic.

They wrestled each other halfway out of their clothes, and then Draco ended up on his knees and sucking eagerly, while Harry gasped aloud, and laughed, and clutched at Draco's hair and neck. Draco didn't mind. Harry's magic could soothe the sting of hair tugged half off his head easily enough.

And it was a sign, always, of the way that he could affect this man who had conquered Hogwarts and terrified the wizarding world. Who did _not _terrify Draco, and Draco didn't know anyone else who could say that.

Harry pulled harder on his hair, as always, when he was about to come, and although he wanted him to come down his throat, Draco pulled back and climbed to his feet. It took Harry a long moment to open his eyes.

"I _hope _you have a better idea than leaving me hanging here," he whispered. "Because if you tried that, then I might have to kill you, and that would deprive me of a lover and the wizarding world of someone it needs."

"In that order of importance, of course," Draco teased, leaning near him and kissing him on the lips.

"_Always _in that order of importance," Harry said, and hooked an almost vicious arm around Draco's neck as he kissed back.

Draco smashed his chest into Harry's, driving him back into his chair, and almost tripping over the stool on the way. Harry was laughing as they fell, his magic dancing and coiling like a dragon's scales, as rough and warm on Draco's skin. Draco shut him up by rocking his groin forwards into Harry's.

"Oh, that's nice," Harry said, and shut his eyes, and let his head roll back on his neck.

Draco watched him as they rocked together, cock to cock, legs stretched painfully wide, and reveled in the fierce gladness that overcame him, gladness that Harry had finally woken up and started putting himself and justice for the wizarding world first, and the good opinions of other people last.

Then politics dissolved into the equally fierce and glad rush of orgasm, and Draco sighed and gasped into Harry's shoulder, pushing the cloth aside to kiss his collarbone.

"I'm sorry we didn't get undressed all the way this time," he muttered, and leaned back in Harry's arms to look down. Yes, Harry's pants were undone, but not Draco's, and somehow Draco's shirt had got tangled around one of his arms and flapped there like an unwanted flag.

"It doesn't matter." Harry stroked Draco's fringe back from his forehead, his eyes wild with delight.

Draco smiled back, in spite of all the reasons not to. This was the man he'd fallen in love with despite all the odds, when first he'd come to negotiate with him in desperation because no one else wanted the job.

Harry had decided that enough was enough, perhaps on the first morning that his magic had grown to the point he could feel it as a separate force, or perhaps after the hundredth time someone had whispered about the possibility of him becoming a Dark Lord. He had taken over Hogwarts, offered his protection to anyone who wanted it, torn apart Azkaban, and declared that he would personally stop anyone who tried to torment magical creatures. Since no one knew exactly what "stop" meant, no one had done it, as far as Draco could figure out.

And Harry was involved in negotiations with the giants and the centaurs, the merfolk and the goblins, the last Draco had heard. The only negotiation the wizarding world was really paying attention to was the one with the goblins. There were people who feared that Harry might convince them to shut down Gringotts, or give all the money to him.

Draco thought they should be paying attention to more of the things that Harry did, but then, he thought that about _everything _Harry did.

"Sometimes I think about taking over the whole wizarding world, you know," Harry confessed drowsily into his hair. "But then I realize that they don't deserve the justice I would give them, and I don't deserve the headaches."

Draco laughed and kissed his ear. "Not to mention I would be out of a job."

"You would always be welcome in my Court, you know that."

Draco caressed Harry's forehead, fingers traveling the pattern of the old scar. "I know." _And the way you talk about your Court, like a court of justice, makes you the only Dark Lord I would ever consider seeking refuge with._

He swung his legs off Harry, and slid to the floor, casting a Cleaning Charm on them both. Harry stretched luxuriously in the wake of the magic. Draco had noticed that before, how he seemed to revel in power that wasn't his own. Another thing that made him different from any Dark Lord Draco had ever known or read about.

"I wish you could stay here forever," Harry muttered, folding his hands beneath his chin and pouting at Draco as he dressed. "But I know you have things in the outside world to occupy your attention, too."

"Lots of things, but none of them as compelling as you," Draco promised, leaning forwards for another kiss. "I don't know what could be as compelling as you, except the vision that you'll rule all of the wizarding world someday."

Harry blinked at him with what looked like genuine surprise. "You think so? For right now, I'm content with Hogwarts and my Court."

Draco nodded soberly at him. "I know that sooner or later someone will decide that you don't mean what you say, and they'll try to pass another stupid law about centaurs or hurt someone you've taken under your protection. Or it could be someone deciding that House unity is only a good thing _in theory _and trying to take Hogwarts back. They'll never ignore you, Harry. The only thing they'll let you do is bide for a while."

Harry scowled. "I know you're right, because the same thought kept waking me up on Sunday. I suppose that sooner or later I'll have to take it over, if only to sleep in."

Draco laughed and left him with a hand trailing across Harry's collarbone where he'd kissed him. Harry didn't try to pull the shirt back up, only watched as Draco Flooed out of what had once been the Headmaster's office and back into his own.

Draco shut his own Floo behind him and carefully healed a few of the marks Harry had given him, but left one or two. That would feed the "torture" rumors that he wanted to use to push people closer to the edge.

Honestly, having Harry Potter as its Dark Lord was the best thing that could happen to the wizarding world. As he aged, Draco had come to see how the world he'd grown up in was both untenable and stupid beyond words. What kind of _competent _wizards relied on a boy to fight their war? What sort of society kept electing Ministers like Fudge, or approving of sending someone like Umbridge to oversee a school? You could forgive some of the mistakes, but not all of them.

And Draco would continue undermining the safety and confidence of the wizarding world, until the moment came when they irritated Harry enough to do something.

A tentative knock on the door snapped him out of his daze, and someone spoke his name in a low voice. Draco nodded. "I'm back," he called, letting his voice shake a little.

The door opened this time, and one of his Aurors stepped into the room. "Minister Malfoy?"

Draco widened his eyes and prepared to tell the true story in the most frightening words he could. He was happy that he was in the position where he could do Harry the most good.

Someday, things would change, and Harry really _would _make his job unnecessary. But because Draco had long since started to find his job boring, because his view of life and love had changed so radically in the six years after he took it, he was ready for that. In the meantime, he would get all the enjoyment he could out of it.

_And turn on the charm._

**The End.**


End file.
